Novel Theory (20th Century)

Abstract

What characterizes novel theory in the twentieth century? In the broadest terms the phrase “twentieth‐century novel theory” refers to any and all thinking about the novel over the course of those hundred years. Insofar as the novel emerged in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a distinctly authoritative literary form, novel theory is the large and disparate effort to account for the rise, shape, and limits of the novel as a literary form and as a historical phenomenon. However, if the novel has encouraged many kinds of critical response, there are a few key concepts that give the field of novel theory thematic and intellectual coherence. Oddly enough, one of the most important of these concepts comes from someone who had relatively little to say about the novel: the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920).